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PK · Pakistan · –

Kabirwala fire, 17 October 2026 Kabirwala

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2026, 09:00 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2026 in Kabirwala, Pakistan, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,293 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 18 in Pakistan in 2026, of 31.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,293ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
17 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
17 Oct
2026
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
8MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct7 Nov
4 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Oct 2026 · 10 MW · 1 22 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 24 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 25 Oct 2026 · 7 MW · 3 26 Oct 2026 · 11 MW · 2 27 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 28 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 29 Oct 2026 · 21 MW · 2 30 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 31 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 1 Nov 2026 · 5 MW · 1 2 Nov 2026 · 2 MW · 1 3 Nov 2026 · 3 MW · 1 4 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
17 Oct 25 Oct 29 Oct 3 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
59km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 222 ha in 2017, 19 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Kabirwala where it started
    1,298 ha reached on 17 Oct
    0.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Oct 30.1 °C 45 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Oct 30.7 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
19 Oct 31.6 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Oct 32.1 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Oct 32.6 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
22 Oct 32.1 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm High 32
23 Oct 31.5 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Oct 29.3 °C 34 % 59 km/h 1.6 mm High 27
25 Oct 28.8 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Oct 29.1 °C 41 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Oct 29.7 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Oct 29.5 °C 42 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Oct 30.0 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Oct 29.3 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Oct 29.8 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Nov 30.3 °C 36 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Nov 31.2 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Nov 30.1 °C 41 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Nov 30.7 °C 41 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Nov 30.5 °C 41 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Nov 30.5 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Nov 30.8 °C 39 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Nov after 32.2 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Nov after 31.1 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Nov after 30.6 °C 36 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 10 Oct 2026
After · 11 Nov 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 19 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 162 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 97: 6.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak162 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10179 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
15 Oct18 Oct21 Oct24 Oct27 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 13Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Pakistan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabirwala fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 October 2026 to 7 November 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 October 2026 to 1 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,293 hectares (12.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabirwala (1,298 ha, 0.8 %).
Is the Kabirwala fire still active?
No fire detections since 4 Nov 2026, 09:00 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Pakistan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 1122 · 16 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 30 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 29 October 2026 → 7 November 2026.
  2. Area: 1,193 → 1,293 ha.
  3. Area: 1,137 → 1,193 ha.
  4. Page published (1,137 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 1122 · 16.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 October 2026 to 1 November 2026. 13 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.